Space Photos of the Week: Curiosity's Got a Selfie Stick

The Hubble captured a gorgeous cosmic couple that is the star Hen 2-427 and the nebula M1-67 some 15,000 light-years from Earth. The bright center is Hen 2-427, a Wolf-Rayet star known for its intense heat and explosions. The colorful gases surrounding are the nebula M1-67. At barely 10,000 years old, they make the perfect pair and a stunning sight.

The Curiosity Mars Rover takes a “low-angle self-portrait” on a rock target called “Buckskin,” where it was drilling for samples. The rover created created the portrait from multiple images snapped by a camera mounted on its robotic arm. August 5 was the rover’s 1,065th Martian day.

This is star forming region is NGC 2174, nicknamed the “Monkey Head” for certain clouds that supposedly resemble a monkey face when seen in visible light. This infrared image makes the monkey disappear, but allows scientists to see the beginnings of new clusters of stars that will be born over the next 1,000 years. The red lights are actually infant stars surrounded by warm dust. These processes could not be seen with the naked eye, but only made possible through infrared.

An up-close shot of Dione, Saturn’s icy moon. The Cassini spacecraft captured the moon at its best resolution ever, passing 295 miles above the surface. The dark gray background is actually Saturn looming just behind the moon, its rings barely visible.

An even closer look at Dione. The image on the left was snapped near the day-night boundary of the moon. Cassini was able to get an even closer image featured right, the highest-resolution view of Dione’s icy surface.

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly takes a photo from the International Space Station of the aurora over Earth on August 15, 2015.